Macbeth
MACBETH
MACBETH IS A VERY COMPLEX CHARACTER
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Macbeth possesses enough self-awareness to realize the dangers of overzealous ambition: “I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’other” (25-28). And yet, the temptation to carry out the witches' prophecy is ultimately too strong for Macbeth to curb his ambition. Macbeth wants the assurance of safety yet is willing to gamble everything at the same time. Macbeth sways between grandiose invincibility and self-recrimination. He is brazening and overconfident:
Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
5All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
“Fear not, Macbeth. No man that’s born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee.”
He is also fatalistic:
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
In the end Macbeth's complexities lead to his own demise.
